Seven Days of Self-Promotion Meme – Day 7

[aadler]

 
snickfic instituted this meme, and others are following:

“I think that many of us like talking about our and linking to our work but are embarrassed to do so without excuse, so I am making us an excuse. Behold, the Seven Days of Self-Promotion Meme, inspired by another recent meme but with more categories, all obviously customizable as you see fit. Notice that the categories are very broad, so you can talk about your art or vids or meta or whatever if you don’t write fic.

The Days:
     1. Something old
     2. Something new
     3. Something you made for someone else
     4. Something you made just for yourself
     5. Something for a major fandom/pairing/character
     6. Something for a minor fandom/pairing/character
     7.

Something you’re just really proud of:

One last time, the question is how to narrow this one down. I mentioned ego on previous days? Still driving at hyperspeed. All the same, even if I regard my own writing quite highly, some stories stand out even to me as favorites.

Probably the best single thing I’ve ever done was “Otherwise a Perfect Sky”, a remix that came from a pure, perfect intersection of solid source material and me being solidly on my game while I was writing it. (sroni, my daughter, has always been able to identity which remix was the one I’d done, in the time between the opening of the works for viewing and the reveal of the authors’ names; this time, I told her, “You won’t have any trouble picking out which story is mine. It’ll be the best one there. Maybe the best you’ve ever read.” And that was almost literal truth.)

Still, this time I’m going to go with something else. “Each Proud Division” was done in 2003, while I was on my first Iraq deployment and two years before I began at LiveJournal; in fact, because it was done on deployment, it wasn’t until the following year that I was able to post it even on my own personal site. As a result, it fell into a little limbo where it received far less attention than I felt it deserved, even then. Now, eleven years later, it has a status just uphill from nonexistent.

But it was good. Unlike basically everything I’d ever done before, every single named character was canonical; additionally, this was an ensemble effort, built around a core of six characters engaged in near-constant interaction, with four others popping in and out to make their own contributions. (I’ve seldom done group stories, preferring to focus on one to four persons, usually fewer, and never before all together at the same time.) To add to the complexity, four of them were from parallel realities, so we were dealing with different versions of known characters. (That was the foundation of the story: four alternate Slayers, brought together unexpectedly, and the four were Joyce the Slayer from my own “Point of Focus”, Cordelia the Slayer from sroni’s “God Save the Queen”, Dawn the Slayer from Brighid’s “Beats a Cruel December”, and the alternate Buffy from the Season 3 episode “the Wish”.) It also had Tara and Jonathan in an impromptu team-up, the first time I’d ever focused a story on Tara. And, to add a final layer of dark irony, there was the reader’s recognition that, at the end, every one of the non-Slayer characters (except Andrew, damn it) would be dead by the Buffy series finale.

It was an achievement. I am indeed proud of it, and those are the reasons.
- - - -

And then other people can read your discussion and follow your links to your fanworks (and maybe comment on them?) and you can read their discussion and follow their links and comment on them, and it will all be lovely.”

Comments

[velvetwhip.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the links here because I cannot believe I never commented on Perfect Sky. My stars! The word "remiss" doesn't even begin to cover that horrific lapse on my part.


Gabrielle

[aadler]

All of us, I’m afraid, read considerably more than we acknowledge. Which, apart from being a lack of consideration (speaking of myself here) is also a mistake, because some wonderful LJ relationships spring from the give-and-take of fic appreciation. You don’t lack there, even if you happened — temporarily — to miss one particular story.

(See how I matched my userpic to yours? Cool, right?)

[velvetwhip.livejournal.com]

I am so glad you forgive me. I try very hard to acknowledge every story I enjoy, but yes - even I fall down on the job (sometimes stunningly so, as in this case). I shall endeavour never to do so again.

Love that you matched userpics with me!


Gabrielle

[rbfvid.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the pointers to 'Each Proud Division', you really intrigued me and I'm going to read the story.
By the way, you might add some summary to the series on your fanfiction list. ‘Cause alternate Slayers (especially someone like Joyce) are really god for bringing attention to the fic.

[aadler]

I’m glad you’ll be checking out “Each Proud Division”. I hope you enjoy it. As for adding descriptions to the fic listing … I’ll have to think about that, but that one might be worth following out. Thanks.